


Sleepless

by veilchenjaeger



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Christmas, Established Relationship, F/F, Femslash Yuletide 2014, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-23
Updated: 2014-12-23
Packaged: 2018-03-03 02:03:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2834138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veilchenjaeger/pseuds/veilchenjaeger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soft, whispering voices pull Janine out of her slumber and towards wakefulness. The voice of a woman, gentle and calm, and the soprano of a child. </p>
<p>-</p>
<p>The night before Christmas is spent sleepless, and Janine faces the doubts she has about her relationship with Mary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleepless

**Author's Note:**

> My entry for Femslash Yuletide 2014, Day 24 - Sleepless.  
> English is not my first language and my Beta can't beta at the moment, so please be kind and forgive any mistakes!  
> (Also miraculously, I'm finally using this AO3 account, cheers for me!)

Soft, whispering voices pull Janine out of her slumber and towards wakefulness. The voice of a woman, gentle and calm, and the soprano of a child. Both woke her so many times, they’re so familiar, and she feels completely at ease as she opens her eyes and watches them.

Mary looks tired, she has a bedhead and yawns between her sentences, but she is smiling fondly at her daughter. Through the open window, the moonlight falls on her thin nightshirt and makes it shine white as snow. Eve is pressing her teddy to her chest and pouts.

“But I want to see Santa!” she whispers intently and shoots her mother a glare.

Mary gives an exasperated sigh and brushes a hand through her hair. “You can’t see Santa, I told you he is too fast, and too silent, and he never comes to a house when the children are watching, that’s his rule!”

“But I want to see him. Can’t you film him?”

“But that would make him very uncomfortable, darling.” Mary leans forward and whispers behind her hand, “I think he is very shy, and he doesn’t like to be seen.”

“I’d be really nice to him.”

“I know, but Santa doesn’t. You’ve already written him a letter and made cookies – biscuits! He’ll be very happy.”

Janine tries hard not to wince at Mary’s correction.

She herself is still working hard on her Australian accent, but Mary had perfected it almost immediately. When she’s tired, however, or when they’re alone, she is still switching, probably unconsciously. She speaks English, Scottish, Irish and of course American, and when she is unfocussed, it’s leaking through. With her daughter, however, she is always talking in a British accent, sometimes trying even a little too hard.

A while ago, Janine asked her what it was about and gotten the answer that Mary liked it. A few weeks later, she had been braver and asked if it was about John. Mary had not answered then.

“Can you go to sleep now?” Mary asks, but Eve averts her eyes – blue, but not Mary’s blue – to the ground. “No.”

“Are you that excited?” Mary chuckles. When Eve nods, she reaches out for her and pulls her onto the bed. “You can sleep here tonight.”

Eve doesn’t answer, but instead stares over Mary’s shoulder directly at Janine.

“Mummy” she whispers, “I think Janine’s awake.”

Janine sits up laughing. “Busted!” She kisses Eve’s brown curls and then, for good measure, Mary’s cheek. “You two have to work on your whispering skills.”

“Our daughter has to work on her whispering skills, you mean” Mary says with a smirk. “I’ll have to teach you the technique.”

Janine’s heart warms at the mention of “our” daughter, Mary and hers. It can heal most doubts, sometimes.

“No, no, it was definitely you” Janine insists, and turning to Eve, “It was Mummy, right? Was it Mummy?”

“Of course it was Mummy” Eve declares proudly. “I was silent.”

“You were, darling” Mary sighs. “I apologize. Now, back to sleep! Otherwise you’ll be too tired to open presents tomorrow!”

They make space for their daughter to climb between them and lie down themselves. Their legs entangle under the thin sheets. Eve rests her little head on her mother’s shoulder, but she doesn’t close her eyes, although her lids fall close for a much too long time when she blinks.

“Goodnight, Maggie darling” Mary whispers into her hair. The voice with which she sometimes says Eve’s old name always gives Janine chills. This time, the warmth returns with Mary’s hand closing around hers, and she is pulled closer to mother and child.

They lie in silence for a while. Janine would love to speak to Mary, but their daughter is fidgeting between them, and it doesn’t take long until she pushes herself up to look at her mother and asks, “Do you think there is going to be a present from my Daddy again this year?”

Mary tenses, just a bit, but they have been together for long enough now so that Janine notices. “There will be, that’s for sure. But not tomorrow. Remember, Christmas is a little later for him than it is for us.”

Also, the present has to go through Mycroft Holmes and several secret services until it can be safely delivered. It comes a few days late, always, although John is getting better at calculating when it is going to arrive. But there hasn’t been a year without a present so far.

It usually is a toy, something appropriate for Eve’s age, along with a long letter addressed to Maggie. There also is a letter to Mary and Janine, significantly shorter. Mary keeps them, mostly because Eve wants her to. They never were rude, but they get kinder with every year.

“Can his funny friend draw me a skull again?” Eve asks, and it makes both of her mothers laugh. That had been two years ago, when they had found a little doodle of a skull on the letter to “Maggie”, along with the caption “Sherlock drew this. Ask your mum about Sherlock.”

“I don’t know if he’s up to that” Janine says. “We should tell him that he needs to draw you something every year.”

“He should draw me a kangaroo” Eve giggles, “because you can’t draw kangaroos.”

“Sherlock can’t either.”

“Sure?” Eve draws the “u” out long. She squeaks when Janine pinches her nose. “Sure. He can only draw skulls.”

“I can testify that” Mary says, “but I can also tell you that you need to sleep now, both of you. It’s three in the morning and I want to sleep.”

“Then you need to sleep and not we” Eve argues, but she lies down anyways and closes her eyes. The silence lasts for a few minutes, then a mumble breaks it. “When can I meet him?”

Janine feels every muscle in her body tense, and she knows that it’s wrong, she knows that Eve has every right to meet her father, but even after all these years, she doubts.

“One day” Mary simply says, the answer she gives her daughter every time. “I promise you are going to meet him, and Sherlock. And then you can tell Sherlock to draw you a kangaroo. But now you sleep, and we sleep, and tomorrow we see what Santa brought.”

“Technically, it’s already Christmas morning” Eve complains. She doesn’t notice the awkwardness that is almost touchable in the hot air of the room, she is too focussed on Christmas.

“Technically, it’s dark outside, although it’s summer. Go to sleep.” Mary kisses her daughter, who cuddles closer to her with a pout, but her yawn and her tired eyes betray her.

Eve falls asleep within five minutes, her breathing going even and calm and her teddy, forgotten, almost squished between her little body and the mattress.

“Do you want her to meet him?” Janine whispers. The question has been on her mind since Eve started asking, and it’s become harder to avoid since Janine isn’t only sharing days but also nights with Mary.

Mary lets herself fall back onto the pillow with an exasperated sigh. “Now, not you as well! Let a woman sleep!”

“I just want to know.”

Mary looks up again, and she has to see it now, that insecurity that has been there for almost two years.

“Yes” she answers quietly. “I want Eve to meet her father. And yes, I also want to see John again. But not for the reason you think.”

“And for what reason do you want to see him?”

“It’s…” Mary lets the words trail off. For a moment, she just stares at the dark ceiling. “It’s one thing that he’s my ex-husband. For my sake, I can do without him just fine. But it’s another thing altogether that he’s the father of my daughter. I just imagine sometimes how it would have been for me if Eve had stayed with him. You know that was a possibility.”

It had been. In fact, it had been Mycroft who had insisted on Eve coming with them instead of staying in London. She could have become a target, he had said, and that had convinced John immediately, and Mary after a few more elaborations. Mary hadn’t wanted to take Eve. Too dangerous, she had said, for a child to be on the run.

Now, Janine know she was glad things are the way they are.

Mary continues slowly, choosing her words with care. “I would have wanted to see her every day of my life. If I wouldn’t have been able to see her at all – I don’t know what I would’ve done. I don’t know.”

“But you can see her every day” Janine reminds her calmly.

Mary gives her a soft smile in return. “Yes, right? I can. But he can’t. And taking his daughter from him forever would be unfair. And… I want to see how he’s dealing with it.”

“It’s okay.” Janine lies down next to the woman she loves, and closes her eyes. “It’s Christmas, let’s sleep, or we’ll die of sleep deprivation when Eve wakes us at six.”

She tries to fall asleep. She tries, but she fails, because all she can think about is that desperately unspoken fear she has carried with her for so long, that fear that Mary might still love John.

“You think I still love him.” Sometimes, Mary can read thoughts. It’s one of the things she doesn’t really deny. Another thing is that she in fact did love John, no matter what the circumstances.

Janine props herself up on her elbow. “Mary…”

“Natalie” Mary corrects automatically.

It makes Janine chuckle. “You’ll always be Mary to me, you know? We talked about this.”

“Mary isn’t even my name.”

“For me, it is.”

Mary told her her real name, some months ago in the middle of the night. It was just one word, whispered into the dark, but Janine knew immediately. But she can’t think of her as anything but Mary.

It’s just how it is to her. Outside, with the people they know, they are Natalie and Elaine. When they’re alone, they are Mary and Janine. Just like Eve is still sometimes Maggie.

“It doesn’t matter” Mary sighs. “As long as you call me Natalie in front of our friends. You were going to say something?”

“Yes.” Janine hesitates for a moment. It seems weird to her now, too sentimental. She says it anyways. “I love you. I love you so much. From the day we met, I couldn’t take my eyes off you, and it only got worse. Or better, depends on how you look at it. And all this talk about Eve meeting John, how you talk to her in a British accent although it would make more sense to use an Australian one – it makes me doubt, okay? Not that you love me, but that you still love him more.”

Mary is silent for a very long time. Then, she sits up and leans over and pulls Janine into an embrace.

“You are here with me” she whispers. “Not John. And that was as much my decision as it was yours and his. When we flew from London, I wanted you by my side, a friend I could count on. And when I later fell in love with you – well, that has always been obvious, in a way. Don’t think you’d be here if I didn’t want you here. I do, I really do, and it’s because I love you, and it’s because I trust you.”

When Mary speaks those three last words, Janine can’t help but wrap her arms around Mary’s waist and bury her head in her chest. It means more than every “I love you” ever spoken.

Mary trusts no one. Mary doesn’t trust their friends, Mary doesn’t trust the waiter at their favourite restaurant, and Mary sure as hell doesn’t trust Mycroft Holmes, although her life is in his hands. Mary loved John, yes, but she never really trusted him.

In the world, there’s one person Janine is sure Mary trusts, and that’s Eve. And apparently, she’s the second one. She can’t believe Mary would ever lie about this.

“I trust you too” Janine murmurs, and it sounds silly, but it isn’t to her.

“That’s a big thing to say to an assassin you call by a false name” Mary murmurs into her hair, and places a kiss on her head.

“But I do” Janine insists. “I really do.”

And it’s true, she would trust Mary with her life. She chose to do so every day when she left Janine Hawkins behind all those years ago and became Elaine Georges. And she hasn’t regretted a moment of it.

“Alright now?” Mary asks, and Janine nods.

“Alright.”

“Good.” Mary slowly loosens the embrace and lies down, but they find each other’s arms again, around Eve this time, taking her into their middle.

“Goodnight, then” Janine murmurs.

“Goodnight” Mary responds. “And Merry Christmas.”

Janine with a startle opens her eyes again and catches Mary still looking at her.

“Mary” she says. “Have you put up Eve’s presents already?”

Mary’s eyes go wide, and laughing, she sits up again. “No, I haven’t. What would I do without you?” She stands and holds out a hand. “Care to help me?”

With a groan, Janine rolls off the bed, careful not to disturb Eve in her slumber. She takes Mary’s hand and pulls herself up. “Looks like it’s going to be a sleepless night after all.”

They don’t let go of each other’s hands until they reach the Christmas tree.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, my Morkins-loving friends.


End file.
